I Am David

Boys don't cry: Stinginess of sentiment dries up I Am David

By Anthony Del Valle

At a climactic moment in writer/director Paul Feig's I Am David (based on Anne Holm's North to Freedom), a 12-year-old boy (David Tibber) is reunited with his long-lost mother following his imprisonment and escape from an Eastern European prison camp in the years following World War II. He walks toward her on a small airport runway, while she approaches him. When they meet, they embrace. It's touching because, well, who wouldn't be touched by a boy being reunited with his mother? But it's a perfect example of what's wrong with I Am David.

The mother doesn't seem ecstatic to see her child. She doesn't run to him. There's nothing particularly unusual that we can read in her eyes. Yet, of course, we as moviegoers are crying out to know how a mother might feel being reunited with a lost child. The boy doesn't register much either--we're told he's nearly emotionally dead anyway--so that a scene that should kick us in the teeth just glides by with grace and taste. Rarely have grace and taste been used so inappropriately.

The film sets up a fascinating situation. The boy's prison escape is engineered by a sympathetic official. Armed with a compass, a bit of bread and a sealed letter that reveals his identity, David is told to head north until he gets to Denmark. The kid has no knowledge of life outside the camp, so when he discovers nations at peace, he's confused. He doesn't know how to handle friendliness. Various people help him, including the lonely Swiss artist Sophie (the great Joan Plowright), who discovers his identity and gets him to his mother.

The narrative sounds good, but Feig just doesn't know how to milk it. The adventures need more complications, more dramatic reversals; the characters, more depth. I Am David is what some people will call a sweet film. But it's so under-dramatized that it's barely there.